WSVRD-2024

Gyanendra Gongal is working as a Senior Public Health Officer at the World Health Organization Regional Office for South-East Asia since 2006. He received a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree from the Moscow Veterinary Academy in 1988 and a Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Free University of Berlin in 1996. He worked in various capacities in the Government of Nepal under the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Agriculture for 17 years. He started his international career as a WHO consultant in Maldives in 2005 and FAO consultant in Sri Lanka in 2006. He has been one of the active members of the regional tripartite group (FAO-OIE-WHO) and now quadripartite (FAO-OIE-WHO-UNEP) in the Asia-Pacific region to advocate operationalization of ‘One Health’ in tripartite platforms since 2010 which has helped to promote better understanding of intersectoral collaboration for addressing emerging infectious diseases including zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and food safety at the human-animal interface. He is now the coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Quadripartite One Health Secretariat. He received the Young Scientist Award from the Nepal Academy for Science and Technology in 1999 and the WHO Reward for Excellence in 2016. He is a fellow of the Indian Association for Veterinary Public Health Specialists and co-chair of the Global Leptospirosis Environmental Action Network (GLEAN). He was honoured with ‘The Lifetime Achievement Award for Rabies by the Association for Prevention and Control of Rabies in India in 2022. He is a Member of the One Health Network for the Global Governance of Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Resistance (Global 1HN) Advisory Committee based in Canada. He has been a peer reviewer of 27 international journals and a member of the WHO Ethical Review Committee (ERC). He has published more than 77 technical papers on transboundary animal diseases, and emerging infectious diseases including zoonoses, food safety, and One Health.